No scenario for escalation inevitable incentives for conflict minimization



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Coral Reefs

Reefs are resilient and will adapt.


P. Gosselin 6/28/11 - an Associate Degree in Civil Engineering at Vermont Technical College and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Arizona in Tucson (“Threat to Coral Reefs Exaggerated, Says New Study” http://notrickszone.com/2011/07/28/threat-to-coral-reefs-exaggerated-says-new-study/, PZ)

Some scientists and media have gotten much attention claiming that the world’s coral reefs could disappear in as little as 20 to 30 years – all because of humans consuming fossil fuels and whatever. Now the Financial Times Germany reports on a study that claims this is all exaggerated. The world’s largest coral reef off the east coast of Australia is not going to disappear as fast as once previously thought, according to a new study. Warnings that the Great Barrier Reef could die off due to climate change over the next 20 to 30 years are exaggerated says Sean Connolly of the James Cook University.” This comes to no surprise for skeptics. How many millions of years and through what ranges of temperature swings have the coral reefs survived so far? Indeed a few tenths of a degree Celsius of change over decades will have no impact on the reefs. And I seriously doubt the reefs are going to do what the models tell them. The James Cook University Press release here says: …some current projections of global-scale collapse of reefs within the next few decades probably overestimate the rapidity and uniformity of the decline.” Again, if the relatively sudden transition from ice age to optimum did not kill them, why would a few tenths of a degree over decades or centuries do it? Wikipedia writes that coral reefs in the Persian Gulf have adapted to temperatures of 13 °C (55 °F) in winter and 38 °C (100 °F) in summer, i.e. 25°C change in 6 months. Like any species on the planet, reefs are always threatened by something. The press release writes: However reefs are naturally highly diverse and resilient, and are likely to respond to the changed conditions in different ways and at varying rates.” The James Cook press release, despite its obvious findings, still tries to convey an aura of alarm (for funding) yet admits that climate change is a natural process that has occurred time and again in the past. Past extinction crises in coral reef ecosystems appear to coincide with episodes of rapid global warming and ocean acidification, they say. This has led some to predict rapid, dramatic, global-scale losses of coral reefs.” The rapid changes they mention here were measured in degrees per decade and century, and not tenths of a degree as is the case with today’s relatively boring rate of change.
Coral reefs are uniquely resilient -- interconnectivity guarantees recovery.

McClanahan et al., ‘2

[Tim, Wildlife Conservation Society, with Nicholas Polunin [Newcastle University] and Terry Done [Australian Institute of Marine Science]. “Ecological States and the Resilience of Coral Reefs.” http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol6/iss2/art18/]



Coral reefs can be resilient to multiple scales of disturbances (Pandolfi 1996, Connell 1997). One important factor that determines the degree of resilience at a particular place is the scattered patchy distribution of reefs throughout tropical ocean basins (IUCN/UNEP 1988). Individual reefs may be replenished to a greater or lesser extent by recruitment from planktonic larvae derived from other reef sources outside of the disturbed areas (Hughes et al. 1999a). Ocean-wide currents can potentially deliver larvae across hundreds and thousands of kilometers (Roberts 1997), although actual dispersal may be more limited (Cowen et al. 2000). Consequently, the combination of spatial heterogeneity and refugia of reef systems, the temporal heterogeneity of dispersal, and a physically stable but moving transport system of currents ensures the connectivity among reefs that is required for recovery. This is an important aspect of ecological resilience.


Deforestation




Their authors misrepresent data to exaggerate the impacts.

SJTG, 2000


[Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, “BOOK REVIEWS Reframing Deforestation: Global Analysis and Local Realities: Studies in West Africa”, 21:2, 99-103, Wiley Interscience]

The abuse of information to support preconceived notions of high rates of forest loss is a common theme throughout the book, and particularly in the chapters on Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia and Ghana. The FAO (1981) indicated that Côte d’Ivoire had the highest rate of deforestation in the tropics, with the vast majority of forest loss having taken place during the twentieth century. A USAID report published around the same time predicted that Liberia would be denuded of its forest cover within another ten years. It was assumed in both cases that, at the turn of the century, forest more or less extended to its bioclimatic limits, despite good contradictory historical evidence. Subsequent measurements of forest cover are equally suspect. The 1980 figure for Côte d’Ivoire was derived from two estimates made during the 1950s and 1960s. The statistics for Liberia are even more incredible, with one survey in the late 1960s, which was used as a basis for the FAO’s (1981) calculations, actually over-estimating the size of the country (and thus underestimating the percentage of forest cover)! According to Fairhead and Leach, if the full range of information on vegetation and population changes in the region is used judiciously, then deforestation rates are generally around 30 percent of the FAO estimates. The authors conclude that the amount of forest lost in Ghana is perhaps only half of that suggested in most recently published texts. Again part of the discrepancy lies in inaccurate estimates of forest extent. Estimates of forest cover at 1900 have tended to be based on the determination of deforestation rates for the late twentieth century, which are then extrapolated backwards. Two assumptions underpin these estimates. First, population sizes have steadily increased and, second, at the turn of the century, primary forest extended to what may be its climatic limits today. An interrogation of historical texts indicates, however, that neither assumption holds. Depopulation was significant in Ghana during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and probably in much of West Africa, as a result of frequent wars, disease and the activities of slavers. Thus Fairhead and Leach maintain that a substantial amount of the forest that existed around 1900 was not primary but regrowth over abandoned fields and villages. Benin is also frequently cited as a country that since 1900 has experienced an inexorable loss of trees from areas that are climatically able to support forest (FAO 1981, 1993; Sayer 1992). However, this claim turns out to have been based upon extrapolations from changes in the boundaries of a single forest fragment, the choice of which was highly subjective. Furthermore, it seems that Benin’s forest zone was not entirely covered by high forest at the turn of the century; in 1910 the forester Chevalier stated that forest had already disappeared ‘almost completely’. Significantly he noted the presence of isolated trees with long straight boles. Chevalier assumed that this feature indicated an origin in closed forest and thus more extensive forest cover in the relatively recent past. Fairhead and Leach provide a different interpretation, however. They argue that a straight bole is not a morphology that is restricted to a particular habitat (i.e. forest). Moreover, they maintain that, rather than a residual of deforestation, the presence of isolated trees may be due to deliberate planting by farmers, and therefore represent an expansion of forest as defined by the FAO. The final two chapters in this part describe forest histories for Togo and Sierra Leone. Deforestation in these two countries is generally assumed to be largely a pre-twentieth century process, and mainly due to iron working (Togo) and commercial logging (Sierra Leone). However, as the authors stress, although the time-scale may differ from previous chapters, the assumption of deforestation remains. The impact of pre-colonial iron working and logging on forests has largely been based on a particular reading of twentieth century landscapes. In reality, the area of land capable of supporting forest in both countries may have been exaggerated; little forest may have been reported by colonial foresters at the beginning of the twentieth century simply because there was never much there. Furthermore, the amount of charcoal required to feed the smelting process and number of logs removed by commercial operators (and hence extents of forest degraded or destroyed) may have been greatly exaggerated. In the third and concluding part of the book the authors argue that exaggerated and pejorative claims about deforestation also have histories and that these can be traced to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The authors re-emphasise their point that these claims were based partly on assumed relationships between farmers and vegetation. Conveniently, the assumption that agriculture and forests were mutually exclusive presented colonial governments with a sound reason for expropriating forest resources. The authors also maintain that the exaggerations were fueled by genuine fears of the climatic impact of deforestation and by the need to present emerging colonial forestry services with a raison d’être. Moreover these assumptions and power relations appear to have out lived the colonial period; for colonial forestry services read national government forest departments and international conservation agencies. Policy responses to the orthodoxy of deforestation have tended to weaken traditional forms of vegetation (including forest) management and links between farmers and their environment. These outcomes lead to increased poverty and instability in rural areas and thus are powerful forces for deforestation. Two calls are made in the book’s concluding chapter that, if implemented, may break this positive feedback, first, for histories of vegetation change to be treated more critically and with greater objectivity than has generally been the case to date; and second, for alternative discourses to be revealed by the research process, and for these alternatives to be circulated as widely as competing interpretations.
Alt cause -- Amazon deforestation.

Canning, 4/27 Paul Canning, Writer for Care2, “Brazil Goes Backwards on Amazon Deforestation,” http://www.care2.com/causes/brazil-goes-backwards-on-amazon-deforestation.html Accessed 6/22/12 BJM

Brazil’s Congress has voted to relax laws which protect the Amazon from deforestation. The new forest code now goes to President Dilma Rousseff, who is being urged to veto the bill or at least some of its clauses. Rousseff opposed the bill, but the country’s powerful farming lobby won over enough MPs to over-rule her and her party. World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Greenpeace called the vote: “O início do fim das florestas — the beginning of the end of the rainforest.” “Brazil has been held hostage to the interests of the agriculture lobby from the outset,” said Paulo Adário of Greenpeace in Brazil. “The agriculture lobby has done everything it could to push through its demands.” WWF says the law grants amnesty to those who have destroyed rainforest and opens the floodgates to further destruction. The amnesty is conditional in that perpetrators must enroll in a government-sponsored conservation program and abide by the rules — but there are no clear guidelines for these programs. Increased enforcement of the Forest Code, which dates back to 1965, has slowed deforestation in recent years, with authorities using satellite images to track clearance. Under that code, landowners must conserve a percentage of their terrain forested, ranging from 20% in some regions to 80% in the Amazon. Jeff Tollefson points out in Nature: “The fear is that weakening the law will reverse this progress and unleash a wave of new deforestation by convincing farmers and ranchers that Brazil doesn’t have the political will to truly enforce the law.” Critics of the law say it will encourage more land clearance because government agencies have proved unable to determine when a plot was deforested. Under the new bill, farmers will be able to cultivate land closer to hilltops and riverbanks, which are especially vulnerable to erosion if trees are chopped down

Natural Disasters




Tech solves the impact


Hamilton 97 – Chairman of IDNDR Scientific and Technical Committee (IDNDR = International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction, Early Warming Capabilities for Geopolitical Hazards, 10/97, http://www.unisdr.org/2006/ppew/whats-ew/pdf/report-on-ew-capabilities-for-geological-hazards.pdf)

Using currently available methodology, the areas that are prone to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, and tsunamis can be identified and the degree of the hazard can be assessed. Such hazard assessments provide an adequate basis for promulgating land-use practices to avoid these geological hazards and building practices to withstand their effects. All nations that are threatened by geological hazards should conduct national, regional, and, where appropriate, local hazard assessments. It should be noted that this is one of the three targets of the IDNDR.

Oceans




Oceans are resilient.

Dulvy et al., ‘3


[Nicholas, School of Marine Science and Tech. -- U. Newcastle, Yvonne Sadovy, Dept. Ecology and Biodiversity @ U. Hong Kong, and John D. Reynolds, Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation @ School of Bio. Sci. @ U. East Anglia, Fish and Fisheries, “Extinction vulnerability in marine populations”, 4:1, Blackwell-Synergy]

Marine fish populations are more variable and resilient than terrestrial populations Great natural variability in population size is sometimes invoked to argue that IUCN Red List criteria, as one example, are too conservative for marine fishes (Hudson and Mace 1996; Matsuda et al. 1997; Musick 1999; Powles et al. 2000; Hutchings 2001a). For the (1996) IUCN list, a decline of 20% within 10 years or three generations (whichever is longer) triggered a classification of 'vulnerable', while declines of 50 and 80% led to classifications of 'endangered' and 'critically endangered', respectively. These criteria were designed to be applied to all animal and plant taxa, but many marine resource biologists feel that for marine fishes 'one size does not fit all' (see Hutchings 2001a). They argue that percent decline criteria are too conservative compared to the high natural variability of fish populations. Powles et al. (2000) cite the six-fold variation of the Pacific sardine population (Sardinops sagax, Clupeidae) and a nine-fold variation in northern anchovy (Engraulis mordax, Clupeidae) over the past two millennia to suggest that rapid declines and increases of up to 10-fold are relatively common in exploited fish stocks. It should, however, be borne in mind that the variation of exploited populations must be higher than unexploited populations because recruitment fluctuations increasingly drive population fluctuations when there are few adults (Pauly et al. 2002).

Alt causes to bio-d decline -- overfishing.


O’Connell 2 – science and environmental issues writer for many different publications (Sanjida, Down among the low life, 4/17/02, http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2002/apr/18/research.highereducation)

The world's fisheries are now in decline. Deep sea fishing decimates bottom-dwelling creatures. Trawling can reduce the diversity of an area by 50% and it can take centuries for the region to recover. Oil and gas drilling is increasingly taking place in the deep sea which, apart from the risk of blow-outs, is polluting. Drilling brings up fossil water from deep within the Earth's crust; the water is often radioactive and highly salty, toxic to organisms adapted to today's oceans. Another worrying area of exploitation is bioprospecting for minerals. For instance, mining manganese nodules could be carried out by a robotic device that would trawl the surface, churning out sediment that can asphyxiate slow-growing organisms. The minerals themselves are a further problem: a lump of manganese as big as a fist was produced by bacterial excretions and grew at the rate of a millimetre a century for a thousand years. It is hardly a sustainable harvest. Dumping at sea is sanctioned for "off-shore processing of seabed mineral resources", and "wastes derived from normal operations in the ocean", which is practically carte blanche for anyone with an imagination. "To the extent that the decision-makers think about the deep sea at all," says Norse, "they consider it primarily a place to first, hide submarines, secondly extract non-living resources like oil, and living resources such as fish, and thirdly, dispose of wastes. The deep sea is 'out of sight, out of mind'. But because there is a growing indication that the deep sea has high biodiversity and because deep-sea ecological processes play a crucial role in the Earth's biogeochemistry, it behoves humankind to treat the deep sea with uncharacteristic caution."

Overpopulation

Technology mitigates the impact of overpopulation.


Mulligan, 9 – economics professor at the University of Chicago. (Casey B., “The More the Merrier: Population Growth Promotes Innovation”, 9-23, http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/23/the-more-the-merrier-population-growth-promotes-innovation)//AH

A recent study reiterated the conclusion that population growth ought to be controlled in order to combat global warming, and other world problems. I beg to differ. The authors of studies like these have exaggerated the benefits of population control, because they ignore some of the significant economic benefits of large populations. The director-general of Unicef has been quoted as saying, “Family planning could bring more benefits to more people at less cost than any other single technology now available to the human race.” And one of the benefits of reduced population, it is claimed, is reduced carbon emissions and therefore mitigation of climate change. This statement takes technology for granted, yet technology itself depends on population. Especially important among the sources of technical progress — discoveries — are trial and error, and incentives. Reasonable people can disagree about the relative importance of these two, but both are stimulated by population. The more people on earth, the greater the chance that one of them has an idea of how to improve alternative energies, or to mitigate the climate effects of carbon emissions. It takes only one person to have an idea that can benefit many. Plus, the more people on earth, the larger are the markets for new innovations. Thus, even if the brilliant innovators would be born regardless of population control, their incentives to devote effort toward finding new discoveries and bringing them to the marketplace depend on the size of that marketplace. And it’s clear that incentives matter for innovative activity: That’s why we have a patent system that helps innovators obtain financial rewards for their inventions. Not surprisingly, research has shown that market size stimulates innovative activity, as in the case of pharmaceutical research that is especially intense for conditions that have more victims. It may take a long time for population growth to either give birth to an inventor brilliant enough, or motivate enough incentives, to have an impact on the climate. But that’s not a reason to turn to population control, because it also takes a long time for population control’s impact to be noticeable. Although the calculations are inherently uncertain, the value of the additional innovation stimulated by additional population may be significant. In my academic work I have calculated that the value, to the entire marketplace through this channel, of an additional person may be on the same order of magnitude of the value that person places on his own life. For example, a person who can earn $2 million in his own lifetime may, by his presence in the worldwide marketplace, stimulate innovative activity that is worth a few hundred thousand dollars. The role of technical change has been repeatedly underestimated. For example, someone a century ago who claimed that the earth could have enough food to support nine billion people (population control advocates now think that the earth’s population can easily get there) would have been considered crazy. But with today’s technology it is easy to see how many billions can be fed. Some of the important solutions to climate change will also come from technological progress.
More evidence.

Sommerfeld, 99 - educated @ Stanford University, Knight Journalism Fellowship at MIT, Deputy editor at msnbc.com digital network and TODAY.com, (Julia, “Will technology save us from overpopulation?”, 1999, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3072069/ns/us_news-only_on_msnbc_com/t/will-technology-save-us-overpopulation/#.T_cI7cWYEmw)//AH
Oct. 12, 1999 — While environmental groups are citing Tuesday’s 6 billion person milestone to highlight the challenges facing the globe, some economists are cheerfully wishing baby 6 billion a happy birthday. They predict technology will ensure that today’s and tomorrow’s children will have longer, more comfortable and more productive lives than those who came before them. This viewpoint, most vocally expressed by some optimistic economists and members of conservative think-tanks, is based on the idea that humans don’t deplete resources but, through technology, create them. Thus, as the globe’s population grows, resources will become more abundant. “We shouldn’t fear the arrival of more people because they are the bearers of the real resource, human intelligence,” said Sheldon Richman, editor of the libertarian publication “The Freeman.” “Technology is the result of applied human intelligence. And technology helps us push back the carrying capacity of the world. It creates resources. In effect, it makes them infinite.” This line of thinking is anathema to most environmentalists. “Pretending that technology will give the earth an unlimited carrying capacity for humans is very dangerous. It ignores the environmental damage and human health implications of what we already do,” said Peter Gleick, director of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security. Scarcity or abundance? Environmentalists say if present population and consumption trends go unchecked, the earth will face a future of overcrowded cities and scarce resources. They picture bumper-to-bumper cars spewing toxins into the atmosphere, wresting the earth’s crust of its last pockets of fossil fuel. They fear more malnutrition and less available fresh water. Economists like Richman, however, predict an abundance - of food, water and fossil fuel (or whatever energy source may replace it). They envision desalination plants making seawater potable, a “Gene Revolution” eradicating food shortages and nuclear science making energy too cheap to meter. That argument, for many, is counterintuitive. How can more people using more resources result in a net gain of resources? Basically, their argument goes as follows: More people and more consumption cause problems in the short run, such as pollution or resource shortages. But short-term scarcity raises prices and pollution causes public agitation and this attracts entrepreneurs who will come up with technological solutions and develop better ways to do things. And in the long run, these developments will leave us better off than if the problems hadn’t arisen at all. In other words, it’s always darkest before the dawn. The environmentalist view, it might be said, is more along the lines of it’s always darkest before it goes black. They see present shortages as harbingers of future resource dearth. Julian Simon, the late University of Maryland professor and original “optimistic economist,” based his argument on historical evidence that resources have become cheaper and more abundant over time with increases in population. The standard of living has risen across the world as its population has grown, and there’s no reason to think this trend suddenly will reverse itself, he argued. Six billion and counting While world population is still rising fast, no one argues it will hit the astronomical numbers like the 15 billion predicted 20 years ago. The United Nations now believes that population will likely peak at 8.9 billion in the middle of the next century. But some environmentalists say even this modified figure could spell disaster. They say we aren’t doing that well providing for the 6 billion people we already have. The “optimistic” economists envision another future. About water shortages, they cite water reclamation, efficiency technologies and desalination. Of increased agricultural demands, they believe higher-yielding seeds will continue to be developed. And when asked about pollution, they note that new, non-polluting energy sources are in the works and fuel efficiency has already drastically improved in recent years. More traditional environmentalists respond that such technologies are too expensive. They argue that desalination plants may be feasible in places like Tampa, Fla., but are simply not affordable in places like India, which is facing a devastating water shortage. “Technology is a tool,” says Alex Marshall of the United Nations Population Fund. “But first it has to be available, and to a large extent it isn’t available in Third World countries.” But economists say that as technologies get more advanced and shortages more apparent, new technologies will become more cost-efficient and within the reach of Third World nations. “As soon as a resource becomes truly scarce, it becomes economical to try to replace it,” said Jerry Taylor, director of natural resource studies at the Cato Institute. “Fusion, fission, wind power, solar power and fuel cells are all alternative energy sources that aren’t economic yet because we aren’t experiencing a shortage of fossil fuels. There has to be economic incentive. Marketplace actors figure out the cheapest way to give people what they want. And when it becomes cheaper to use solar power or wind power, we will do so.”


Overpopulation rhetoric is alarmist nonsense – population is slowing


Pearce, 9 - international speaker on environmental issues @ Yale and Cambridge, contributor for the WWF, the UN Environment Programme, the Red Cross, UNESCO, the World Bank, the European Environment Agency, and the UK Environment Agency, trustee of the Integrated Water Resources International (Fred, “The overpopulation myth”, 3-8-2010, http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/the-overpopulation-myth/)//AH

The idea that growing human numbers will destroy the planet is nonsense. But over-consumption will Many of today’s most-respected thinkers, from Stephen Hawking to David Attenborough, argue that our efforts to fight climate change and other environmental perils will all fail unless we “do something” about population growth. In the Universe in a Nutshell, Hawking declares that, “in the last 200 years, population growth has become exponential… The world population doubles every forty years.” But this is nonsense. For a start, there is no exponential growth. In fact, population growth is slowing. For more than three decades now, the average number of babies being born to women in most of the world has been in decline. Globally, women today have half as many babies as their mothers did, mostly out of choice. They are doing it for their own good, the good of their families, and, if it helps the planet too, then so much the better. Here are the numbers. Forty years ago, the average woman had between five and six kids. Now she has 2.6. This is getting close to the replacement level which, allowing for girls who don’t make it to adulthood, is around 2.3. As I show in my new book, Peoplequake, half the world already has a fertility rate below the long-term replacement level. That includes all of Europe, much of the Caribbean and the far east from Japan to Vietnam and Thailand, Australia, Canada, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Algeria, Kazakhstan, and Tunisia. It also includes China, where the state decides how many children couples can have. This is brutal and repulsive. But the odd thing is that it may not make much difference any more: Chinese communities around the world have gone the same way without any compulsion—Taiwan, Singapore, and even Hong Kong. When Britain handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997, it had the lowest fertility rate in the world: below one child per woman. So why is this happening? Demographers used to say that women only started having fewer children when they got educated and the economy got rich, as in Europe. But tell that to the women of Bangladesh, one of the world’s poorest nations, where girls are among the least educated in the world, and mostly marry in their mid-teens. They have just three children now, less than half the number their mothers had. India is even lower, at 2.8. Tell that also to the women of Brazil. In this hotbed of Catholicism, women have two children on average—and this is falling. Nothing the priests say can stop it. Women are doing this because, for the first time in history, they can. Better healthcare and sanitation mean that most babies now live to grow up. It is no longer necessary to have five or six children to ensure the next generation—so they don’t. There are holdouts, of course. In parts of rural Africa, women still have five or more children. But even here they are being rational. Women mostly run the farms, and they need the kids to mind the animals and work in the fields. Then there is the middle east, where traditional patriarchy still rules. In remote villages in Yemen, girls as young as 11 are forced into marriage. They still have six babies on average. But even the middle east is changing. Take Iran. In the past 20 years, Iranian women have gone from having eight children to less than two—1.7 in fact—whatever the mullahs say. The big story here is that rich or poor, socialist or capitalist, Muslim or Catholic, secular or devout, with or without tough government birth control policies in place, most countries tell the same tale of a reproductive revolution. That doesn’t mean population growth has ceased. The world’s population is still rising by 70m a year. This is because there is a time lag: the huge numbers of young women born during the earlier baby boom may only have had two children each. That is still a lot of children. But within a generation, the world’s population will almost certainly be stable, and is very likely to be falling by mid-century. In the US they are calling my new book “The Coming Population Crash.” Is this good news for the environment and for the planet’s resources? Clearly, other things being equal, fewer people will do less damage to the planet. But it won’t on its own do a lot to solve the world’s environmental problems, because the second myth about population growth is that it is the driving force behind our wrecking of the planet. In fact, rising consumption today far outstrips the rising headcount as a threat to the planet. And most of the extra consumption has been in rich countries that have long since given up adding substantial numbers to their population, while most of the remaining population growth is in countries with a very small impact on the planet. By almost any measure you choose, a small proportion of the world’s people take the majority of the world’s resources and produce the majority of its pollution. Let’s look at carbon dioxide emissions: the biggest current concern because of climate change. The world’s richest half billion people—that’s about 7 per cent of the global population—are responsible for half of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. Meanwhile, the poorest 50 per cent of the population are responsible for just 7 per cent of emissions. Virtually all of the extra 2bn or so people expected on this planet in the coming 30 or 40 years will be in this poor half of the world. Stopping that, even if it were possible, would have only a minimal effect on global emissions, or other global threats. Ah, you say, but what about future generations? All those big families in Africa will have yet bigger families. Well, that’s an issue of course. But let’s be clear about the scale of the difference involved. The carbon emissions of one American today are equivalent to those of around four Chinese, 20 Indians, 30 Pakistanis, 40 Nigerians or 250 Ethiopians. A woman in rural Ethiopia can have ten children and, in the unlikely event that those ten children all live to adulthood and have ten children of their own, the entire clan of more than a hundred will still be emitting less carbon dioxide than you or me. It is over-consumption, not over-population that matters. Economists predict the world’s economy will grow by 400 per cent by 2050. If this does indeed happen, less than a tenth of that growth will be due to rising human numbers. True, some of those extra poor people might one day become rich. And if they do—and I hope they do—their impact on the planet will be greater. But it is the height of arrogance for us in the rich world to downplay the importance of our own environmental footprint because future generations of poor people might one day have the temerity to get as rich and destructive as us. How dare we? Some green activists need to take a long hard look at themselves. We all like to think of ourselves as progressives. But Robert Malthus, the man who first warned 200 years ago that population growth would produce demographic armageddon, was in his time a favourite of capitalist mill owners. He opposed Victorian charities because he said they were only making matters worse for the poor, encouraging them to breed. He said the workhouses were too lenient. Progressives of the day hated him. Charles Dickens attacked him in several books: when Oliver Twist asked for more gruel in the workhouse, for instance, that was a satire on a newly introduced get-tough law on workhouses, known popularly as Malthus’s Law. In Hard Times, the headmaster obsessed with facts, Thomas Gradgrind, had a son called Malthus. In A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge was also widely seen at the time as a caricature of Malthus. Malthus, it should be remembered, spent many years teaching British colonial administrators before they went out to run the empire. They adopted his ideas that famine and disease were the result of overbreeding, so the victims should be allowed to die. It was Malthusian thinking that led to the huge and unnecessary death toll in the Irish potato famine. We must not follow the lure of Malthus, and blame the world’s poor for the environmental damaged caused overwhelmingly by us: the rich. The truth is that the population bomb is being defused round the world. But the consumption bomb is still primed and ever more dangerous.

Overpopulation doesn’t lead to economic downturn – technology solves


Williams, 8 - Professor of Economics at George Mason University, and was chairman George Mason’s Economics dept., (Walter “Government poses biggest threat to our prosperity” Spartanburg Herald-Journal, July 2,2008, GoogleNews)//AH

Contrary to the myths about how overpopulation causes poverty, poor health, unemployment, malnutrition and overcrowding, human beings are the most valuable resource — and the more of them the better. There is absolutely no relationship between high populations and economic despair. For example, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly Zaire, has a meager population density of 22 people per square kilometer, while Hong Kong has a massive population density of 6,571 people per square kilometer. Hong Kong is 300 times more crowded than the Congo. If there were any merit to the population control crowd's hysteria. Hong Kong would be in abject poverty while the Congo nourishes. Yet Hong Kong's annual per capita income is $28,000 — while the Congo's is $309, making it the world's poorest country. What are the chances for the United States to become overpopulated? How many more people could we handle? I don't have an answer, but here are a couple of facts that suggests we have a ways to go before we have to worry about overpopulation: All urban areas, any community of At least 3 percent of the United States' 2.3 billon-acre land mass. The world's population is 6.7 billion. That means if the entire world's population were put into the United States, each person would have about a third of an acre. Neither the United States nor the world is running out of space. Letting them off the hook Population controllers have a Malthusian vision of the world and see population growth as outpacing the means for people to care for themselves. Mankind's ingenuity has proven the Malthusiuns dead wrong. As a result of mankind's ingenuity, we can grow increasingly larger quantities of food on less and less land. The energy used, per dollar of GDP, has been in steep decline, again getting more with less, and that applies to most other inputs we use for goods and services. The greatest threat to mankind's prosperity is government. A recent example Zimbabwe's increasingmisery. Like our country, Zimbabwe had a flourishing agriculture sector, so much so that it was called the breadbasket of southern Africa. Today its people are on the brink of starvation as a result of its government. It's the same story in many countries — government interference with mankind's natural tendency to engage in wealth-producing activities, blaming poverty on overpopulation not only lets governments off the hook; it encourages the enactment of harmful policies.




Overpopulation is over-hyped – food supply and space will support life


Harren, 11 - Writer @ Lifenews (Mia, “Overpopulation is a Myth: Plenty of Food and Space Exists” 5-29-11, http://www.lifenews.com/2011/05/29/overpopulation-is-a-myth-plenty-of-food-and-space-exists/?pr=1)//AH

Proclamations of overpopulation have circulated for decades. Are they true? First off, what is meant by the word “overpopulation”? It has nothing to do with the amount of people but rather to the resources and the capacity of the environment to sustain human activities. To be overpopulated, a nation must have insufficient food, resources and living space. With the world population at around 6.8 billion last year, food and living space are hardly a concern. In 1990, it was estimated that the world could feed up to 35 billion people. Most sources estimate that the global population will level out at around 9.2 billion in 2050, and then start to decline. Indian economist Raj Krishna estimates that India alone is capable of increasing crop yields to the point of providing the entire world’s food supply. Lack of food is not the problem but rather the need for more efficient distribution. Another supposed problem is living space. In 2003, the entire population of the world could fit inside the state of Arkansas. The world may seem crowded, but it’s because humans cluster together for trade and companionship, not for lack of room. Even so, there are those who insist that we will continue to breed exponentially, causing a population explosion. Paul Ehrlich first introduced this idea in 1968 with his book, “The Population Bomb.” It succeeded in scaring the masses, just as Thomas Malthus did, but these theories suffer under the impression that humans are the only thing fluctuating. “Population rose six-fold in the next 200 years. But this is an increase, not an explosion, because it has been accompanied, and in large part made possible, by a productivity explosion, a resource explosion, a food explosion, an information explosion, a communications explosion, a science explosion, and a medical explosion,” wrote community development specialist Abid Ullah Jan in an article published in 2003 called “Overpopulation: Myths, Facts, and Politics.” Poverty, too, is not the effect of overpopulation, but rather the aftermath of poor leadership. In Ethiopia, government officials are blamed for causing poverty by confiscating food and exporting it to buy arms. In Africa, economic problems are seen as a result of excessive government spending, taxes on farmers, inflation, trade restrictions and too much government ownership. Depopulation is more likely to cause economic distress than these other factors.




Technology and economic growth solve overpopulation problems


Bailey, 10 - B.A. in philosophy and economics @ University of Virginia, economist for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, (Ronald, “The Eternal Return of Overpopulation”, 10-19-10, http://reason.com/archives/2010/10/19/the-eternal-return-of-overpopu)//AH

Overpopulation panic is back. Concerns about a world too full of “filthy human children” motivated eco-terrorist James Lee when he held employees of the Discovery Channel hostage at gunpoint in September. But the deranged Lee is far from alone when it comes to worrying about overpopulation. The May-June cover of the progressive magazine Mother Jones asked, “Who’s to Blame for the Population Crisis?” British journalist Matthew Parris wrote an op-ed in September in the London Times asserting, “If you want to save the planet, stop breeding.” Parris further coyly suggested that we study “China’s example, for lessons good and bad.” But on World Population Day in July, British journalist Fred Pearce argued that “population is not the problem.” Pearce’s relatively sanguine article at the environmentalist website Grist provoked Robert Walker, former head of the anti-gun group Handgun Control and now executive vice-president of the Population Institute, to respond at the same site with an article titled “Of course population is still a problem.” Walker asks Pearce what he evidently thinks are deep questions: “Looking ahead, Fred, will these countries [with anticipated population growth in Africa and Asia] be able to feed themselves? Will they have enough safe drinking water? Will their lands be deforested or their rivers polluted? Will their maternal mortality rates and infant mortality rates remain unacceptably high? Will they be caught in a demographic poverty trap? Will they become failed states? If you have good answers to these questions, please let me know.” Let’s take a stab at providing good answers to Walker’s questions. Will the world be able to feed itself in 2050? As it happens, the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (Biological Sciences) devoted its September 27 issue to analyzing the issue of global food security through 2050. One of the specially commissioned research articles projects that world population will reach around 9 billion by 2050 and that in the second half of the 21st century, “population stabilization and the onset of a decline are likely.” This should allay Ryerson’s concern that the world’s resources are not infinite and therefore “cannot support an infinite population of humans.” So okay, infinite human population growth isn’t likely, but can the Earth adequately feed 9 billion people by 2050? Well, yes, suggest two other of the Royal Society articles. A review of the relevant scientific literature led by Keith Jaggard from Rothamsted Research looks at the effects of climate change, CO2 increases, ozone pollution, higher average temperatures, and other factors on future crop production. Jaggard and his colleagues conclude [PDF], “So long as plant breeding efforts are not hampered and modern agricultural technology continues to be available to farmers, it should be possible to produce yield increases that are large enough to meet some of the predictions of world food needs, even without having to devote more land to arable agriculture.” Applying modern agricultural technologies more widely would go a long way toward boosting yields. For example, University of Minnesota biologist Ronald Phillips points out that India produces 31 bushels of corn per acre now which is at the same point U.S. yields were in the 1930s. Similarly, South Africa produces 40 bushels (U.S. 1940s yields); Brazil 58 bushels (U.S. 1950s yields); China 85 bushels (U.S. 1960s yields). Today’s modern biotech hybrids regularly produce more than 160 bushels of corn per acre in the Midwest. For what it’s worth, the corporate agriculture giant Monsanto is aiming to double yields on corn, soybeans, and cotton by 2030. Whether or not specific countries will be able to feed themselves has less to do with their population growth than it does with whether they adopt policies that retard their economic growth. Another article looking at the role of agricultural research and development finds that crop yields have been recently increasing at about 1 percent per year. In that article researchers estimate that spending an additional $5 to $10 billion per year would increase food output by 70 percent over the next 40 years. Note that world population is expected to increase by about 33 percent over that period. What about safe drinking water? Water is more problematic. The researchers commissioned by the Royal Society run a model that projects that competition for water to meet environmental flow requirements (EFRs) and municipal and industrial demand will “cause an 18 percent reduction if the availability of water worldwide for agriculture by 2050.” Interestingly, the amount of freshwater withdrawn for municipal and industrial use was 4.3 percent in 2000 and is estimated to increase to 5.9 percent by 2050. So the main competition for agricultural water is maintaining flows for environmental reasons. Since water is now often unpriced and subsidized, it gets used very inefficiently. As water becomes scarcer farmers and other users will have incentives to adopt water sparing techniques, such as drip irrigation. In addition, researchers are close to developing drought tolerant crops. The study also notes that water stressed regions will be able to “import water” in the form of food produced in areas with abundant water. With regard to deforestation and polluted rivers, the answer is probably yes for many of the poorest countries. However, speeding up economic growth and technological improvements will dramatically lower the risks of these undesirable outcomes. As noted above, enough food to feed 9 billion can be grown on land currently devoted to agriculture. With regard to water pollution, it is one of the first environmental problems that poor countries begin to clean up as they grow wealthier. A recent study found that in every country where average annual per capita income exceeds $4,600 forests are stable or increasing [PDF]. In addition, technological progress offers the possibility that humanity will increasingly reduce its future demands on nature by a process of dematerialization [PDF], that is, obtaining more value while using less material. Maternal mortality rates have fallen substantially—from 422 per 100,000 live births to 251 per 100,000 live births—over the past 30 years, according to a study published in The Lancet this past April. Sadly, the study noted, “More than 50% of all maternal deaths were in only six countries in 2008 (India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo).” Oddly, some activists opposed the publication of The Lancet article, fearing that the good news would stifle their fundraising. The world’s infant mortality rate has never been lower. Most countries, even very poor countries, continue to experience declines in infant mortality. Walker’s last two questions about poverty traps and failed states are related, but not in a way that supports his implied points. As Wheaton College economist Seth Norton explains, "Fertility rate is highest for those countries that have little economic freedom and little respect for the rule of law.” He adds, "The relationship is a powerful one. Fertility rates are more than twice as high in countries with low levels of economic freedom and the rule of law compared to countries with high levels of those measures." Fertility rates are high in failed states like Somalia, Chad, Sudan, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Yemen, because of the lack of rule of law which inexorably generates poverty. Norton persuasively argues that such places are so chaotic that it’s like living in giant open access commons. In those cases people often reason that more children means more hands for grabbing unowned and unprotected resources for the family. Such anarchic places would be particularly ill-suited to implementing the kind of population control policies Walker favors. According to research published by the Royal Society, it looks as though the world will be able to feed 9 billion people by 2050, perhaps even allowing some farmland to revert to nature. Water is a problem, but economic and technological solutions show promise in ameliorating it. But more importantly, Walker and other overpopulationists get the causality backwards. Poverty is the cause and high fertility is the symptom. Poverty traps and failed states which result in high maternal death rates, starvation, pollution, and deforestation are not created by population, but by bad policies. Working to spread economic freedom and political liberty is a lot harder than self-righteously blaming poor people for breeding too much. But it's the only real option.

No impact to overpopulation– multiple warrants


Bailey, 9 - B.A. in philosophy and economics @ University of Virginia, economist for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, (Ronald, “Our Uncrowded Planeted”, 10-1-09, http://www.american.com/archive/2009/september/our-uncrowded-planet)//AH

Imminent doom has been declared again. But don’t worry, neo-Malthusian predictions of overpopulation are wrong. Every so often, the overpopulation meme erupts into public discourse and imminent doom is declared again. A particularly overwrought example of the overpopulation meme and its alleged problems appeared recently in the Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch in a piece by regular financial columnist Paul B. Farrell. Farrell asserts that overpopulation is “the biggest time-bomb for Obama, America, capitalism, the world.” Bigger than global warming, poverty, or peak oil. Overpopulation will end capitalism and maybe even destroy modern civilization. As evidence, Farrell cites what he calls neo-Malthusian biologist Jared Diamond's 12-factor equation of population doom. It turns out that Farrell is wrong or misleading about the environmental and human effects of all 12 factors he cites. Let’s take them one by one. 1. Overpopulation multiplier: Looking at the most recent United Nations’ population projections, it is likely that world population will peak somewhere between 8 and 9 billion near the middle of this century (current population is about 6.8 billion) and then begin declining back toward 6 billion by 2100. In addition, if lower fertility rates are the goal, promoting economic freedom is the way to achieve it. In 2002, Seth Norton, a business economics professor at Wheaton College in Illinois, published a remarkably interesting study on the inverse relationship between economic freedom and fertility. Norton found that the fertility rate in countries that ranked low on economic freedom averaged 4.27 children per woman while countries with high economic freedom rankings had an average fertility rate of 1.82 children per woman. Crop yields have been increasing at a rate of about 2 percent year for 100 years and now population is growing at 1 percent per year. 2. Population Impact multiplier: Farrell mirrors Diamond's concern that the world's poor want to become rich. This means that they aim to consume more. Can the Earth sustain increased consumption? Yes, economic efficiency is dematerializing the economy and thus will spare more land and other resources for nature. As Jesse Ausubel, director of the human environment program at Rockefeller University, and colleagues have shown, although the average global consumer enjoyed 45 percent more affluence in 2006 than in 1980, each consumed only 22 percent more crops and 13 percent more energy. See below for more information on positive trends in agriculture, water usage, and forest growth. 3. Food: Farrell says we are running out. It is true that far too many people are on the verge of starvation and the recent economic crisis has pushed even more in that direction. But Farrell and Diamond overlook the fact that crop yields have been increasing at a rate of about 2 percent per year for 100 years and now population is growing at 1 percent per year. Agronomist Paul Waggoner argued in his a 1996 article, "How Much Land Can Ten Billion People Spare for Nature?," published in the journal Daedalus, that "if during the next sixty to seventy years the world farmer reaches the average yield of today’s U.S. corn grower, the 10 billion will need only half of today’s cropland while they eat today’s American calories." If Waggoner is right—and all signs are that he is—the future will be populated by fat people who will have plenty of wilderness in which to frolic. 4. Water: There is no doubt that a lot of fresh water is being wasted. However, we know how to solve that problem—create property rights and free markets for water. For example, water use per capita in the United States has been declining for two decades. Farrell and Diamond propagate the stale water wars meme. Transboundary water cooperation rather than conflict is the norm. "The simple explanation is that water is simply too important to fight over," notes Aaron Wolf, the Oregon State University professor who heads up the Program in Water Conflict Management. Wolf observes that history records that the last water war occurred 4500 years ago between Lagash and Umma over irrigation rights in what is now Iraq. Farrell claims that forests are being destroyed at an accelerating rate. He is wrong. Forest regrowth is the actual trend in many places. 5. Farmland: First note that vast increases in agricultural productivity over the past half century spared an area about the size of South America from being plowed up to produce food for the current population. In a 2000 Science article, soil scientist Pierre Crosson and colleagues noted, "studies of the onfarm productivity effects based on 1982 N[ational] R[esource] I[nventory] cropland erosion indicated that if those rates continue for 100 years, crop yields (output per hectare) would be reduced only 2 to 4 percent. These results indicate that the productivity effects of soil erosion are not significant enough to justify increased federal outlays to reduce the erosion, but not all agree." In any case, soil erosion is a problem that is being addressed by modern high-tech no-till agriculture. 6. Forests: Farrell claims that forests are being destroyed at an accelerating rate. He is wrong. Forest regrowth is the actual trend in many places. A 2006 article on forest trends in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found "Among 50 nations with extensive forests reported in the Food and Agriculture Organization’s comprehensive Global Forest Resources Assessment 2005, no nation where annual per capita gross domestic product exceeded $4,600 had a negative rate of growing stock change." In fact, leaving aside Brazil and Indonesia, globally the forests of the world increased by about 2 percent since 1990. And there is further good news—a quarter to a third of the tropical forests that have been cut down are now regenerating. 7. Toxic chemicals: Farrell writes, "Consider the deadly impact of insecticides, pesticides, herbicides, detergents, plastics ... the list is endless." When one actually considers the impact on synthetic chemicals on people, it turns out that the more man-made chemicals, the higher do human life expectancies rise. Contrary to activist claims, trace amounts of synthetic chemicals are not producing a cancer epidemic. In fact, cancer incidence rates in the U.S. have been falling for nearly a decade. 8. Energy resources, oil, natural gas, and coal: Farrell is just incoherent here. He hints at "peak oil," and supplies may become tight, but that would largely be a result of political factors, not the depletion of reserves. As for coal and natural gas supplies, no one is suggesting their imminent depletion. 9. Solar energy: Farrell does not here mean photovoltaic power, but rather the Earth's "photosynthetic capacity,” that is, the ability of plants to turn sunlight into food, fuel, and other useful products. Apparently, he thinks that humanity is using too much of it. To the extent this is a problem, biotech advances are already addressing it by researching ways to boost crop productivity by transforming plants from less efficient C3 photosynthesizers to the more efficient C4 pathway. The world's poor want to become rich. This means that they aim to consume more. Can the Earth sustain increased consumption? Yes. 10. Ozone layer: Farrell seems unaware of the fact that this problem has already largely been dealt with. To the extent this was a problem, the Montreal Protocol in 1987 that banned the refrigerants that were depleting the ozone layer has fixed it. This month, NASA reported a slightly positive trend of ozone increase of almost 1 percent per decade in the total ozone from the past 14 years. 11. Diversity: Biodiversity trends are notoriously difficult to predict. In 1979, Oxford University biologist Norman Myers suggested in his book The Sinking Ark that 40,000 species per year were going extinct and that 1 million species would be gone by the year 2000. Myers suggested that the world could "lose one-quarter of all species by the year 2000." At a 1979 symposium at Brigham Young University, Thomas Lovejoy, former president of The H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment announced that he had made "an estimate of extinctions that will take place between now and the end of the century. Attempting to be conservative wherever possible, I still came up with a reduction of global diversity between one-seventh and one-fifth." Lovejoy drew up the first projections of global extinction rates for the “Global 2000 Report to the President” in 1980. If Lovejoy had been right, between 15 and 20 percent of all species alive in 1980 would be extinct right now. No one believes that extinctions of this magnitude have occurred over the last three decades. What happens to humanity if many species do go extinct? In a 2003 Science article called "Prospects for Biodiversity,” Martin Jenkins, who works for the United Nations Environment Programme-World Conservation Monitoring Center, pointed out that even if the dire projections of extinction rates being made by conservation advocates are correct, they "will not, in themselves, threaten the survival of humans as a species." The Science article notes, "In truth, ecologists and conservationists have struggled to demonstrate the increased material benefits to humans of 'intact' wild systems over largely anthropogenic ones [like farms] … Where increased benefits of natural systems have been shown, they are usually marginal and local." 12. Alien species: Farrell claims, "transferring species to lands where they're not native can have unintended and catastrophic effects." Mostly not. Biologist Mark Davis chalks up most opposition to "alien" species to prejudice and muddy thinking, adding in the current issue of the New Scientist that "you may be surprised to learn that only a few per cent of introduced species are harmful. Most are relatively benign." As I pointed out nine years ago, the preference for native over non-native species is essentially a religious one. It has no warrant in biology. While there certainly are environmental problems, current trends do not portend a looming population apocalypse. Instead, the 21st century will be more likely remembered as the century of ecological restoration.


Ozone




Your studies are wrong – pollution levels are manageable and they don’t wreck the ozone.


Artz 11 – reporter for the Heartland Institute (Kenneth, Nation’s Air Quality Continues to Improve, 6/13/11, http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2011/06/13/nations-air-quality-continues-improve)

Air quality is improving almost everywhere in the United States, according to the American Lung Association’s (ALA) “State of the Air” report for 2011, which covers the years 2007 through 2009. Ozone, Soot Levels Improve According to the report, ozone levels registered the strongest improvement. All metro areas in the 25 cities most polluted by ozone showed improvement over last year’s report. Particulates also registered impressive reductions. All but two of the 25 cities most affected by particle pollution (sometimes called soot) improved over last year’s report. The State of the Air 2011 report examines ozone and particulate pollution at official monitoring sites across the United States in 2007, 2008, and 2009. The report uses the most current quality-assured nationwide data available for these analyses. EPA Seeks to Frighten Joel Schwartz, a Senior Consultant with Blue Sky Consulting Group of Sacramento, California, said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and environmental activist groups nevertheless continue to frighten people into believing national air quality is worsening. “The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has made the claim that air pollution at current levels kills tens of thousands of Americans every year. EPA makes a wild claim like that because, first, they believe it, but secondly because they must keep up the perception that there’s a serious problem that must be solved. If there wasn’t a serious problem, then EPA wouldn’t be able to justify the enormous budget and resources the organization commands,” said Schwartz. “Of course, the EPA’s story is all wrong. We have cleaner air now than 1970 when the Clean Air Act was established. In fact, the air in 1970 was cleaner than it was in the 1930s,” Schwartz observed. “Obviously, at high enough levels air pollution can kill people. But the evidence shows that the air we breathe today is nowhere near that level, nor has it been for a very long time. In fact, the air is getting cleaner,” said Schwartz Moving the Goal Posts Physician John Dunn, a policy advisor for the American Council on Science and Health, said EPA and environmental activist groups are able to list large numbers of metropolitan areas as out of compliance with federal standards only because the federal government keeps moving the goal posts. The compliance goals, moreover, have little or no correlation with human health. “The EPA has continually and repeatedly reduced the air quality standard for the purpose of adding more areas [as failing to reach] the air quality standards,” said Dunn. “The air in the United States has been safe for a long, long time. But EPA and environmental activist groups want the air to be pristine and free of small particles. Cleaner air than what we currently breathe doesn’t mean that it is safer air. In fact, you can’t have pristine air unless you live in a small bubble with air conditioning and air filters,” Dunn explained. James Enstrom, an epidemiologist at the University Of California Los Angeles School of Public Health, agreed. “The reason cities and counties go up and down on the ALA’s list is because, basically, EPA keeps lowering the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) which apply to outdoor air throughout the country,” Enstrom said. “It’s based on an over-interpretation of the health effects of criteria pollutants associated with ozone and smog. That means it’s difficult for these counties to comply even though the effects [of ozone and smog levels] are very weak.” Phantom Health Impacts The air quality in the United States is already safe, and it won’t be any safer if the EPA continues increasing regulations to make it cleaner, said Steve Milloy, an environmental and public health policy consultant and the publisher of JunkScience.com. “The goal of regulatory agencies like the EPA is to create more regulators. Regulators naturally like to regulate. The environmental movement is using the environment like a shield so that everyone will be so ginned up with fear that we’ll pass their agenda which harms the economy and costs billions and billions of dollars and can’t be justified,” Milloy explained. “EPA uses straw man arguments to scare the public into action through accepting their agenda. I dare any regulator to show me the person who is adversely affected by air quality today. It just doesn’t happen,” said Milloy, who holds a masters degree in health sciences and biostatistics.



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